As I write this, it’s Saturday night and I’m home alone. My husband is enjoying his delayed Father’s
Day present from our daughter and they’re at the Red Sox game, if the black
clouds muttering on the horizon don’t rain them out. We’ve had our hottest days of the summer over
the last week, and since we have no AC, I took refuge at the
movies, to see The One Hundred Foot
Journey.
I went without knowing the storyline and discovered the film
featured clashing cultures, Michelin star restaurants and old family recipes.
I was sold when a few minutes into the picture one of the main characters said,
“Food is memory.”
During my
year-and-a-half working at
a local gourmet food/cheese shop, Mary, one of the
owners, used to say the same thing.
There,
Robert, her chef/husband made bread pudding and corn chowder that catapulted me
back to dinners elbow to elbow with my five siblings at the drop-leaf
table in the kitchen where we grew up.
At
the cheese shop, I'd close my eyes and moan a little at the emotions these tastes evoked.
But there’s a reason seeing this movie was right for me today.
The story is all about food and passion, and we're living some of
that in our family right now.
You see, our daughter took a break from college
after two years, arriving home in May of 2013, subdued and struggling. Two days later, at age 19, she began a grown-up job,
working in a well-respected seafood restaurant opening in a new location. Hired as “line cook,” she started off making
salads and desserts. A year plus later, she’s
learned so much, they place her wherever they need her. She shucks oysters, grills, sautees, bakes, steams
and deep fries. She worked sixteen hour
shifts during the restaurant opening, and later, twelve hour shifts, often for days
in a row. She’s arrived home with more burns
than I care to contemplate, once with several inches of her arm scalded by
blueberry compote when someone in the kitchen thought it would be funny to turn
her blender on high. She’s watched chefs
get transferred, people walk off jobs, staff members arrive at work drunk or
high, and she’s climbed behind the pile of dirty plates to get things moving
when the dishwasher’s fallen behind. In spite of all that (which I've come to understand can pretty much be the norm in the restaurant business), now
when the place is short-staffed, she juggles two stations with competence…and self-assurance. In
spite of the heart-attacks her worry-wart mama has had along the way,
it’s clear as glass that via this demanding road, our daughter has grown.
And perhaps, rediscovered herself. At the beginning of July, she sent in an
application to culinary school in Rhode Island and she's been accepted for their baking and pastry program. She’s planning to commute, and today we went
down there and picked up her knife set. By the time you read this on Monday, after a nine-to-nine shift at the restaurant the day before, she’ll have started
this next phase of her life.
So, this post is a tribute to her. For establishing her own path. For
learning to stand up for herself. For gutting
it out through the aching back and knees, the double shifts on Christmas,
Easter and the Fourth of July. For getting
up and going to work after the nights she came home thinking she never
could. For proving to herself what she
is capable of.
Here’s the truth. Wherever her path leads, all I hope, is that this next experience helps her
to know food in a way that delivers sublime memory, and that she comes to understand,
as her mama always has, that preparing something delicious for those you care about is a
declaration of love.
And to Tim, on our 30th wedding anniversary, I’ll cook for you any day.
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